Cluedo on a Rainy Day
by radialarch
Summary: A game of Cluedo is played. Someone cheats. / S/J-ish. Fluff/humour.


**Title**: Cluedo on a Rainy Day  
><strong>Spoilers<strong>: Might make a touch more sense after THoB  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: None.  
><strong>Rating<strong>: K  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: None.  
><strong>Wordcount<strong>: ~ 1450  
><strong>Summary<strong>: A game of Cluedo is played. Someone cheats.

_A/N: Yes, two-player Cluedo is workable! If you Google "scaled clue", the first link should lead you to the tweaked rules. But those aren't really necessary to understand the story._

* * *

><p>"John."<p>

The call came from the sofa, where Sherlock was currently sprawled out like a discontented cat. John gauged the amount of irritation in the sound, gave a small shrug, and ignored the detective in favour of his laptop.

"_John._"

This time it was more of a whine, low and steady, drawn out just enough to convey the depths of Sherlock's existential pain. The slow tap of John's fingers on the keyboard continued, unchecked.

"John, all you're doing is writing yet another one of your ridiculous blog posts, in which you omit all the _relevant_ detail and fill with romanticised rubbish. Surely you can spare a moment to respond."

"The 'romanticised rubbish', as you call it, is why your clients don't run screaming out the door when you start talking, Sherlock." Having pressed "enter", John pushed his chair back from the desk with a satisfied sigh and finally glanced at Sherlock. "Go on, then, what's flying around your brilliant brain now?"

"_Bored_," Sherlock spit out in an exasperated huff. "No one has any imagination whatsoever. Lestrade's on holiday, and Donovan won't give me cases."

"I told you it was a bad idea to antagonise her."

"If she cared so much, maybe she should start carrying around her own deodorant!"

"That's not the point." John swallowed down a laugh. "If you hadn't done it, you might not be so bored now."

"Yes, I would." Sherlock gave a morose sort of pout. "She'd never have given me the _really_ interesting ones, only petty break-ins that three-year-olds would have been able to solve." He suddenly sprang up onto the coffee table, dressing gown settling around him slowly like a bedraggled pair of wings. "Why can't anyone _think_ properly?"

"You'd hate that," John said easily. "You like things the way they are now, so that you can show off and be clever and tell everyone else off."

"Don't be absurd." Sherlock's reply was irritated, but he hopped off the table with a touch less drama. "Let me borrow your gun."

"Oh, no, you don't," John half-shouted as Sherlock shot a sideways glance at his desk drawer. "Sherlock, shooting the wall is not an acceptable way to handle being bored. Or acceptable in any way, for that matter."

"Well, then, John, please, enlighten me on what an 'acceptable' way to pass the time would be."

"I dunno, watching telly, reading a book, playing board games..." John trailed off at Sherlock's blank look. "Board games? You know. Monopoly, Cluedo, Life?"

"Games...you play on a board?"

Sherlock's expression was one of honest confusion, and John's jaw dropped. "You've...deleted it, haven't you?" he said incredulously. "You must have. I refuse to believe that you grew up not knowing what board games are."

"Well, if I have deleted it, then I assume it's not of any importance."

John snickered at Sherlock's lofty tone. "Yeah, well, get ready to un-delete it. You're bored, it's raining. Today's as good a time to play as any."

* * *

><p>"Cluedo," Sherlock said with some distaste.<p>

"Cluedo," John agreed. "It's along your lines of interest, at least. You like murders."

"I like _interesting_ murders. There's no motive here, no body to examine, no falsely concerned relatives to question – this whole thing is a travesty!"

"You still have to figure out who did it," John pointed out, serenely picking up the yellow playing piece. "I'll be Colonel Mustard. Pick a character."

Sherlock's hand plucked up the red piece and placed it on the board.

"...Miss Scarlett?"

"It's a playing piece, John, not my alter-ego. _And _she goes first."

"Still." John cocked his head at Sherlock, mock-contemplative. "No, I can see it. Smart, attractive, no sense of boundaries—"

"Shut up." With a good-natured snap, Sherlock looked down at his cards and rolled the die.

John just smiled.

* * *

><p>"I think...let's see, Professor Plum, in the Ballroom, with the Lead Pipe."<p>

"That's preposterous! If it were in the hall I could understand, or even the kitchen, but what kind of ballroom has _lead pipe_ laying around? And, of course, that suggests a murder of passion, unplanned, which doesn't fit the professor's profile at all. He'd plan a crime down to the smallest of details and feel confident enough to keep those very plans in his breast pocket."

"Sherlock." John rolled his eyes. "Do you _have_ Professor Plum, the Ballroom, or the Lead Pipe?"

"I—er, here." Sherlock flipped up his Lead Pipe, and then launched back into his tirade.

John hummed, only half-listening. He was fairly sure it was either Miss Scarlett or Reverend Green in the Conservatory or the Study, and now he knew it had to be the Rope. "Go on," he pushed the die over. "Your move."

Sherlock ended up in the study and recited quickly, "Mrs White, the Study, the Revolver."

"Nope." John flashed at Sherlock the card with the housekeeper and watched as a strange look slid over Sherlock's face. "Er...Sherlock?"

"Oh. _Oh_. Interesting. Of course. That would explain why there are so many potential murder weapons – any half-decent investigator would have been able to rule out most of them just by DNA analysis. And the alibis: what kind of detective wouldn't be able to sniff out a hole in a story with repeated questioning?"

"Sherlock." In the meantime John was still stuck in a corridor, steadily making way toward the Conservatory. "Would you like to take your turn?"

"It was Dr Black, in the Study, with the Rope," Sherlock exclaimed triumphantly. "Of course, I wouldn't recommend hanging as the best method, but I suppose he was getting a bit desperate—"

"Who?"

"Dr Black." Sherlock gestured impatiently at the box. "Our kind-hearted host. Oh, yes, that's it, the knife or the gun might have shown his medical knowledge, and that wouldn't do, at all—"

John blinked. "Sherlock," he started, "the victim can't be the murderer."

"Why not? When you've eliminated all else, that becomes the only possible solution. We can infer that the Doctor was having money troubles – _obvious_ – and we might even entertain the thought that he wouldn't have minded much if someone had been framed for his death. Why else would he have invited all his so-called friends over right before committing suicide? Was it revenge? It must have been. Oh, that's clever. It's a terrible thing when doctors turn astray, John, terrible – they're intelligent enough to plan ahead and have nerves enough to go through with it."

"Thanks for that," John said dryly. "I'm not precisely on the straight-and-narrow myself."

Sherlock dismissed that last comment with an airy wave. "Don't be ridiculous, John, anyone who knows anything about you would realise that you've never planned breaking a law in your life."

"Okay, then." John wasn't sure whether that was a compliment or not, coming from Sherlock Holmes, but he decided not to question it. "It's not Dr Black, though."

"It has to be!"

"It's not in the rules."

"_The rules_," said Sherlock with extreme contempt. "This isn't about some arbitrary regulation written by a company who couldn't even make sure their weapons were _logical_. Imagine – murder by _candlestick_? Only the most melodramatic of writers would even consider that a possibility."

"Pot, kettle," John muttered. Sherlock didn't dignify that remark with a response, instead reaching over for the solution envelope. John watched him shake out the cards with some trepidation – Sherlock didn't take being wrong very well.

"Sherlock?" prompted John after a solid minute.

Slowly, Sherlock flipped over a card: The Study. Another: The Rope.

There was no third.

"What...happened to the murderer?"

"Interesting."

"Sherlock. Three cards went in there in the beginning. There should still be three."

"Yes."

"But that's only two."

"Obviously."

"...did you pocket the other card?"

"Don't be absurd." Sherlock's expression was pure innocence. Of course, John had worked with Sherlock long enough to know that impression was only correct about half of the time.

"Okay, why don't you show me what you have in your pockets, then?"

With an exaggerated sigh (as if _John_ were the one being unreasonable!), Sherlock slipped a hand into his dressing gown pocket and began pulling out an assortment of items that chased John's eyebrows into his hair.

"Why the hell do you have a pheasant feather?"

"Case," Sherlock replied absently. "Gamekeeper was blackmailing my client."

"Is that...blood in that vial?"

"Of course not." But Sherlock did not clarify what the red liquid _was_, leaving John a bit worried.

"Sherlock, keeping animal body parts in your dressing gown probably isn't healthy."

"It's only a paw. And rather well-preserved, at that."

"...right."

"There, you see? I haven't pocketed anything."

John was almost certain that he saw the corner of a card peeking out from Sherlock's sleeve, but he decided to keep quiet about that. "All right," he said instead. "I'm going to make some tea."

"Two sugars," Sherlock said automatically.

"Who says I'm making you any?"

The look Sherlock shot him was tragically sad. John almost laughed.

"Okay, fine," he acquiesced. "But only if you put away the game."

John really should have known that asking Sherlock to clean up anything was a bad idea. When he came back, two cups in hand, the Cluedo board was pinned to the wall with a knife, and the other playing pieces were nowhere in sight.

* * *

><p><em>Humour isn't my forte, but fics are all about experimenting. Tell me how it turned out!<em>


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